Forum area for discussing hybridizing tomatoes in technical terms and information pertinent to trait/variety specific long-term (1+ years) growout projects.
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#1 |
Tomatovillian™
Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: Newfoundland, Canada
Posts: 6,794
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Just starting this thread to post some results of my growouts in 2015.
Since my plan for 2015 was somewhat to gallop madly off in all directions, I don't know what to say by way of introduction, except for my thanks to everyone who participates in discussions here, for all the food for thought. ![]() In spite of the contrary wisdom, I found I had to put a name on the lines I want to grow forward or even remember in the short term, because I seem to be truly incapable of remembering strings of numbers and letters as the 'name' of a plant. So amongst the small fruit below you will find my favourites from 2015: Hope's Early and the Yellow Warbler, Kitten Paws Pink, and the Skipper and Rodney as will be discussed further down in the thread. |
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#2 |
Tomatovillian™
Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: Newfoundland, Canada
Posts: 6,794
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One of my objectives this year was to collect some data on growth habit for crosses between indeterminate and determinate or semi-determinate plants. And I did. And now I know why there is so little written about it - the data is a PIA to collect, pretty much impossible to photograph unless you are willing to yank the plants and lay them out on a sheet. So instead I have put together a few graphics to show what I found.
Black Nipper is a sp/sp "semi-determinate" black cherry selected last year from the F2 of the cross Napoli a Fiaschetto X Black Cherry. I was baffled by the F2 because they were very late to express the sp/sp terminal bud pattern and until they did, appeared to be indeterminate with numerous repeats of three leaves between flower clusters. I grew three plants of the F3 and carefully counted the leaves/nodes and cluster patterns, shown below. As you can see, each plant has a unique semi-determinate pattern on the main stem. The number shown below the first leaf in the graphic refers to the number of leaves/internodes before the first cluster, which according to what I have read is under separate genetic control. It also appears that the number of leaves between clusters or leaf-cluster pattern is a complex trait which is certainly still segregating at the F3 stage. |
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#3 |
Tomatovillian™
Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: Newfoundland, Canada
Posts: 6,794
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Also the pattern of side shoots and axillary shoots was different. Two examples below, to compare Black Nipper F3 B1-7 and B2-9. There is obviously a big difference in the fruit to shoot ratio for the two plants.
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#4 |
Tomatovillian™
Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: Newfoundland, Canada
Posts: 6,794
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As it happens the plant with the 'best' growth habit also got the top rating by my taste test panel so plenty reason to grow this one again. I have no idea if the growth habit is stable at this stage, or how much the pattern will continue to segregate. Since I saw a lot of variation in the OP's I grew this year, it looks as though perhaps??? any desired pattern can be stabilized? I will have to grow it and find out I guess.
This is a decent black cherry, that produced a lot of fruit in a small space although it didn't entirely live up to its potential and failed to set all the clusters that flowered late in the season. It is not the champion in the earliness and perhaps cold or stress tolerance department, but it has some good traits and I made several new crosses with the F3 again this year, to 'stir the pot' and keep avenues open for improvement as well as development of some variety of fruit with semi-determinate growth habit... I hope. |
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#5 |
Tomatovillian™
Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: Newfoundland, Canada
Posts: 6,794
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One trait that has turned up in the Black Nippers, which I think is great for a plant that you don't intend to prune, is the grabby "self staking" foliage. No I'm not kidding. These plants will grab onto the cage, even onto their own stems when they outgrow the cage. I noticed this trait in Black Cherry, and honestly, I've grown peas that didn't grab as well as these do.
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#6 |
Tomatovillian™
Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: Newfoundland, Canada
Posts: 6,794
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Very inspired last year by Tom Wagner's description of his approach of crossing 'unstable' generations to maximize diverse interesting combinations. So besides doing some backcrosses for backup, as Dar Jones has often advised, I also made a cross between the Black Nipper F2 and my F1 plant Zolotoe Serdtse X Black Early. I intended this cross as a shortcut to diverse semi determinate black combinations, because the expected frequency is then 1 of 2 plants sp/sp as well as 1 of 2 black fruited.
I grew 4 plants of the BNZB F1, and was pretty baffled when I ended up with four indeterminate plants. But thanks to discussion of Beta and sp linkage in another thread, it was explained. The chance of getting a single Beta allele in this cross is only 1/4, and I didn't get any in the four plants grown. I definitely want to grow more of the F1 next year and see how the segregation goes with the furtive Beta. I did get two black, as expected, and these were very similar in taste but differently shaped. They were both unexpectedly fantastically sweet and rich tasting, my personal favourites of all, and were dubbed the Skipper and Rodney. These will segregate for size in the F2, and I'm very curious to see how the fruit quality traits play out in different sized fruit. They were also earlier than the Black Nippers, but I'm not sure whether that is heterosis or a fixed trait. |
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#7 |
Tomatovillian™
Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: Newfoundland, Canada
Posts: 6,794
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One of the interesting discussions this year was about the association between the amount of green in the unripe fruit and the best taste. It was Frogsleap who observed and commented about this in his blog. I had some doubts, but in the final analysis, all of my best tasting fruit had a lot of dark green in the unripe stage, so indeed it does seem to be a good 'tell'.
These are pictures of Rodney ripening. It almost looks like a striped fruit - but there are no stripes in the parentage. The red siblings in the same cross had much less green (of course no gf) but they really were unremarkable. |
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#8 |
Tomatovillian™
Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: Newfoundland, Canada
Posts: 6,794
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As we talked about in another thread here, I was able to tell the flowers of a black fruit from those of a red one, and indeed all my predictions of black were correct. Also, the one 'black flowered' sib in my Zosis F2 turned out to have a Beta allele, so it appears that the flower colour for black was dominant to the Beta type flower - at least, in this case with only one Beta allele.
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#9 |
Tomatovillian™
Join Date: Jul 2015
Location: Yarmouth,NS Canada
Posts: 296
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Great Job and great info. I will be keeping my eyes open for Black Nipper in the future.
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#10 |
Tomatovillian™
Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: Newfoundland, Canada
Posts: 6,794
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Just two more ugly graphics of the PIA growth habit.
Zolotoe Serdtse has maybe the ultimate semideterminate growth habit, just one leaf between clusters all the way up the main stem. I grew six F2 plants of the cross between Zolotoe Serdtse and Indian Stripe, and I got one semi-determinate plant. As with Black Nipper, there are more leaves in this generation, than the mother's original semideterminate pattern. It seems pretty clear that the number of leaves between clusters is genetically distinct from sp/sp. Also, as with the Black Nipper cross, it seems that "more" leaves might be dominant to "fewer". I guess a lot of plants would have to be grown and duly counted and charted to really nail down this trait and how it works. But I wouldn't expect a plain small determinate like the parent to be represented 1/4 in F2 of an indeterminate cross. |
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#11 |
Tomatovillian™
Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: Newfoundland, Canada
Posts: 6,794
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I nearly passed over this cross for 2015, but I'm really glad I didn't.
Zolotoe Serdtse has a lot of interesting traits besides its growth habit and high fruit/shoot ratio. Beta is an interesting trait to work with, although the tight linkage with growth habit mostly defeats the original purpose of the cross - to make some different colours/shapes/textures of fruit with the same growth habit. The semi-determinate segregant was of course a Beta orange, and entirely similar to the mother fruit in every way except shape and size. Slightly smaller and earlier, mostly round, and very firm and slow ripening. Firmness and slow ripening can be a useful trait, it has its place as also its limits. Unfortunately both ZS and her Beta semideterminate offspring suffered serious quality issues in 2015, associated with low light levels and record cold temperatures through July. Both of them had about half their fruit unmarketable quality due to uneven ripening and some grey wall - disorders of potassium metabolism associated with those adverse conditions and with other causes of K deficiency. Other tomato growers in our area had the same problem with some varieties, as I did too with some but not all of the OP's and others. So... it has raised a lot of questions - unanswered - about the genetics of K metabolism, and also about the genes for 'firmness' which seem to be really stacked in ZS, and dominant and/or penetrant in subsequent generations. |
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#12 |
Tomatovillian™
Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: Newfoundland, Canada
Posts: 6,794
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This was my favourite of the ZOSIS F2's. Beautiful, smooth and dark green long heart shapes, which turned out to have one Beta allele, and may have a gf allele too. A few of these fruit also ripened unevenly but much less damage than ZS and two others. And they were delicious, with a unique and unexpected hint of canteloupe - similar to Zolotoy Zapas.
Another 'out of nowhere' trait that I discovered when I moved the plant to a sunnier spot late in the season, is that the foliage had that funky Sungold smell. Now that I know about the linkage, I know this Beta/- plant also has the sp allele, so expect the 1/4 segregation of a semi-determinate in the next generation. It is one I will grow forward for sure. |
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#13 |
Tomatovillian™
Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: Newfoundland, Canada
Posts: 6,794
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Here are a couple of pictures of Beta/Beta orange, -/- (red), and Beta/- fruit (orange-red). There were two reds out of six; one Beta/Beta; one gf/gf Beta/-, and two more Beta/- including the possible Goblet mutant which spent most of the summer outdoors in the cold but did produce some nice fruit at the end of it.
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#14 |
Tomatovillian™
Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: Newfoundland, Canada
Posts: 6,794
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This red is interesting and I will have to grow it some time, to see what else I can learn about the segregation of "firmness" traits from ZS. It was most unusual because it showed no sign of uneven ripening, slowly enough became softer and a deep red colour all around, but the core remained very firm indeed while the outside seemed fully ripe. The ripe parts were spicy and good, but this quite different permutation of "firm" and "slow ripening" leaves me perplexed.
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#15 |
Tomatovillian™
Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: Newfoundland, Canada
Posts: 6,794
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The only beef in this lot of six siblings, the single beta allele is evident from the colour of the fruit, and I'm very curious to see what the next generation will look like... the full Beta black is expected to be semideterminate so I will get at least one sdet of a different colour.
As with other Zosis, extremely slow ripening fruit. Sweet. |
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